You missed the point or do not understand how the BCS works. Of course the three schools leaving should have more BCS games, the Big East champion is an automatic qualifier for a BCS game. Bosie having two games as non AQ conference member is much more impressive. 5 BCS bids for the old teams to 2 for the new teams... but that's not really a fair comparisson... how many of those 5 automatic bids would the Big East teams have gotten if they didn't have the automatic bid? Pitt and Syracuse haven't had a BCS worthy team in years... West Virginia maybe, about equal to Boise... for football they're not losing a thing, if anything, they might be better with Boise, Houston, SMU, San Diego State.

1:04 pm December 7, 2011

matt's right wrote:

And the proof is last year's UConn trip to the Fiesta Bowl. The conference champion on a convoluted tie-breaker, that team had no business in a BCS bowl game. Against Oklahoma, they looked as slow and overmatched as a Big Ten team playing in any other bowl game..

12:25 pm December 8, 2011

Anonymous wrote:

The NBA isn't back yet? You'd hardly know with the dreadfully identical highlights now running ad nauseum on ESPN mornings.

10:20 pm December 12, 2011

Justin NC wrote:

I couldn't take this article too seriously, once I read, "the not even close" line. I know people have this perception of Syracuse and Pittsburgh since this whole fiasco as begun, but that perception is based off of basketball, not football. This realignment is all about FOOTBALL television revenues. Syracuse and Pittsburgh are running for a their share of $155-milliion/year in the ACC - that's all. On the grid iron, Pittsburgh has ended a season ranked in the top 25 just 3 times, in not just the BCS years, but its entire tenure in the Conference and this year they are #62. Syracuse has not been ranked in the past decade, ending this year a Big East worst #79. West Virginia is the only real loss, but that said, joining the party is Boise State, who in the past decade has a resume even WVU can't touch, 8 of 10 years in the Top 20, four of those in the Top 10. Also joining is #19 Houston, #52 San Diego, #57 Southern Methodist, and #89 Central Florida. Now BCS re-evaluation is based on three years, not 14, so past glory doesn't save you. The newcomers numbers over the past 3 years drastically increase the Big East standings. However, even more shocking is, if you average the BCS rank of conference memberships, both the ACC and PAC 12 fall below the Big East in this year's final poll. The Pac 12 only has 2 teams in the entire BCS Top 40, only 3 last year, and yet I hear no discussion on their performance. BCS ranking is only part of a conference's strength, the other is financial; and the addition of television markets #5 Dallas, #10 Houston, #19 Orlando, and #28 San Diego will significantly bolster the Big East's position when entering television negotiations in 2012. While people mock the on court status of the Big East basketball. Currently 6 of the Top 20 teams in the land are Big East schools (with only Syracuse among them set to depart) - add to that, the record 11 schools that made the NCAA tournament in March, even with the losses 8 would have been there, still the highest of any conference. Joining is an up-and-coming Central Florida who has built a new Arena for it's program and handed UCONN it's first loss of the season the other night; Houston was in the tournament in the NCAA tournament in 2010; SMU was a 20-win team last season with a top 20 win, and has the aforementioned (in your story) Matt Doherty, who if you or the previous writer knew in mocking him, has previously coached both the Big East's Notre Dame and the ACC's North Carolina Tar Heels to the NCAA tournament. The Big East will add two more football only schools to ensure a Conference Championship game, then will likely add at least two more, of which I could see all-sport programs that could be a whipping boy to boost football records, but who'd be a boost to the basketball side - say Memphis, Temple? On the Conference call on Wednesday if you actually listened, Commissioner Marinatto called this expansion just first step in their big plans -- I'd laugh if on the heals of that gigantic Pac 12 tv deal, the Big East ends up with a bigger payout than the ACC and 'Cuse and Pitt are taking a step down when they leave.

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